Meet the Faculty Sessions

This year, the department's GEC (Yang, Jamieson, Yellowhorn and Farmer) have decided to launch a test run for an initiative, “Meet the Faculty”, for our graduate students.

The “Meet the Faculty” is designed to provide an opportunity for the graduate students to get to know each of our faculty members better, in a friendly and informal way where faculty members will share their personal perspectives on different fields and different aspect of archaeology and biological anthropology, and more importantly, their journey from being a graduate student to a faculty member at SFU.

Each week, one faculty member will come and talk with the graduate students, speaking for about 20-30 minutes and then leaving 20-30 minutes to address questions from the graduate students.  The event will not only get the faculty and the graduate students better acquainted with each other, but also serve as ice-breaking session for more interactions in the future.

The GEC hopes all of our faculty members will be able to participate.

Ideas on what you could say include, where you received your education, highlights of your graduate school experiences, your research areas, projects you are working on, what you like and/or dislike about what you do, why you chose to become a professor, and other archaeological related jobs you have done before coming to SFU, any quotes, tips and anything else that you would like to share with the students. 

The “Meet the Faculty” sessions will take place from 12:30 to 1:30 in SWH 9152 on desired Mondays (before and with the existing Graduate Proseminar which follows from 1:30-2:30 in SWH 9152).

Please see the attached sign-up sheet, and let me know of your desired time slot.

The first session with Dongya Yang will take place this Monday, so please try to make it out for this event.

A reminder that you are all invited to the proseminar that takes place following the Meet the Faculty sessions.  The Archaeology Graduate Student Proseminar is a weekly meeting which allows for the graduate students to get together and discuss their research progress and challenges, learn from other students experiences and set goals to meet for future meetings.  While Proseminar meetings will be held weekly, additional Guest Speaker Proseminar meetings will be held where a speaker is invited to lead a presentation and discussion on topics deemed important by the Archaeology graduate student cohort during the regular Proseminar meetings.

For more information you can contact the organizing committee at arch-proseminar@sfu.ca

Thesis template

It has been brought to my attention that some of you may be unaware that a specific Archaeology thesis template was created for Archaeology graduate students. It can be found on this page by scrolling down to department customized templates.Please use this template, and be consistent to avoid revisions later on.  If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me (mfarmer@sfu.ca), or the thesis assistant Joanie at (thesis_assistant@sfu.ca).

advice on publishing for graduate students

Tyler Cowen, Economics Prof at George Mason, provides an interesting ten-minute interview on graduate student publishing here.

SFU Student Learning Commons offers a free thesis read ahead service

Thanks Heather for pointing this out....

The Student Learning Commons offers a free thesis read ahead service. I'm using this right now, and I meet with an editor once a week to discuss one chapter of my thesis. I have found it to be incredibly helpful. Here is the link:

http://learningcommons.sfu.ca/services/graduate-students

SFU Library Thesis Assistance Website

As a grad student you should be aware of the library's thesis requirements, and they have just updated their website on this topic to help guide you through the process.  Their website is here.

Khan Academy Statistics

I've been chatting with graduate students about lack of background in statistics, and some of you apparently have been using the "Khan Academy" to do tutorials on the basics of statistics.  I had never heard of this guy in his closet in the Silicon Valley, but I am now amazed and totally hooked on the concept.

In any case, if you are in need of a statistics "course" to do at your own speed, to give yourself the basics of statistics, for free, then his tutorials are here (just scroll down to the statistics section).  It is very basic, but appears to be inspirationally well-taught.

If you are interested in the whole concept and life story of this guy (which is quite fascinating) watch his video lecture here.

Transatlantic History student online journal

UT Arlington Transatlantic History Student Association invites students to submit manuscripts for the first edition of our new online journal Traversea.
Traversea is an online journal dedicated to the publication of research in transatlantic history. Transatlantic history pertains to the interconnectedness of human experience and cross-cultural encounters of Europe, Africa, and the Americas (North and South) from 1500 to the present.  Transatlantic history is inherently interdisciplinary, transnational, and comparative in approach and moves beyond the boundaries imposed by the
concept of the nation state.
The editors invite submissions that are historical, geographical, anthropological, literary, sociological, and cartographic in nature. Traversea is operated by doctoral students as a joint project between the Transatlantic History Student Organization and the doctoral program in transatlantic history at the University of Texas at Arlington.
The deadline for submissions is May 1, 2011. The publication of the first issue is planned for Fall 2011.

Contact Information:  Isabelle Rispler, PhD Student, History Department, University of Texas at Arlington
isabelle.rispler@mavs.uta.edu